Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigour, and activity of mans nature. God is pleased to vouchsafe the best that he can give only to the best that we can do. The properest and most raised conception that we have of God is, that he is a pure act, a perpetual, incessant motion.

The schools dispute, whether in morals the external action superadds anything of good or evil to the internal elicit act of the will: but certainly the enmity of our judgments is wrought up to an high pitch before it rages in an open denial.

Age, which unavoidably is but one remove from death, and consequently should have nothing about it but what looks like a decent preparation for it, scarce ever appears of late days but in the high mode, the flaunting garb and utmost gaudery of youth.

Let not men flatter themselves that though they find it difficult at present to combat and stand out against an ill practice, yet that old age would do that for them which they in their youth could never find in their hearts to do for themselves.

Consult the acutest poets and speakers, and they will confess that their quickest, most admired conceptions were such as darted into their minds like sudden flashes of lightning, they know not how nor whence.

Some utterly proscribe the name of chance, as a word of impious and profane signification; and indeed if taken by us in that sense in which it was used by the heathen, so as to make anything casual in respect to God himself, their exception ought justly to be admitted.

To say a thing is chance or casualty, as it relates to second causes, is not profaneness, but a great truth; as signifying no more than that there are some events beside the knowledge, purpose, expectation, and power of second causes.

When thy brother has lost all that he ever had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think to lick him whole again only with thy tongue?

The measures that God marks out to thy charity are these: thy superfluities must give place to thy neighbours great convenience; thy convenience must yield to thy neighbours necessity; and, lastly, thy very necessities must yield to thy neighbours extremity.

The vast distance that sin hath put between the offending creature and the offended Creator required the help of some great umpire and intercessor to open him a new way of access to God; and this Christ did for us as mediator.

Our religion is a religion that dares to be understood; that offers itself to the search of the inquisitive, to the inspection of the severest and the most awakened reason; for, being secure of her substantial truth and purity, she knows that for her to be seen and looked into is to be embraced and admired; as there needs no greater argument for men to love the light than to see it.

Though it be not against strict justice for a man to do those things which he might otherwise lawfully do, albeit his neighbour doth take occasion from thence to conceive in his mind a false belief, yet Christian charity will, in many cases, restrain a man.

God is the fountain of honour, and the conduit by which he conveys it to the sons of men are virtues and generous practices. Some, indeed, may please and promise themselves high matters from full revenues, stately palaces, court interests, and great dependences. But that which makes the clergy glorious, is to be knowing in their profession, unspotted in their lives, active and laborious in their charges, bold and resolute in opposing seducers, and daring to look vice in the face, though never so potent and illustrious; and, lastly, to be gentle, courteous, and compassionate to all. These are our robes and our maces, our escutcheons and highest titles of honour.

Company, he thinks, lessens the shame of vice by sharing it, and abates the torrent of a common odium by deriving it into many channels, and thereby if he cannot wholly avoid the eye of the observer, he hopes to distract it at least by a multiplicity of the object.

Conscience is a Latin word, and, according to the very notation of it, imports a double or joint knowledge; one of a divine law, and the other of a mans own action; and so is the application of a general law to a particular instance of practice.

Every man brings such a degree of this light into the world with him, that though it cannot bring him to heaven, yet it will carry him so far that if he follows it faithfully he shall meet with another light which shall carry him quite through.

The reason of mankind cannot suggest any solid ground of satisfaction but in making God our friend, and in carrying a conscience so clear as may encourage us with confidence to cast ourselves upon him.

The testimony of a good conscience will make the comforts of heaven descend upon mans weary head like a refreshing dew or shower upon a parched land. It will give him lively earnests and secret anticipations of approaching joy; it will bid his soul go out of the body undauntedly, and lift up his head with confidence before saints and angels. The comfort which it conveys is greater than the capacities of mortality can appreciate, mighty and unspeakable, and not to be understood till it is felt.

A palsy may as well shake an oak, or a fever dry up a fountain, as either of them shake, dry up, or impair the delight of conscience. For it lies within, it centres in the heart, it grows into the very substance of the soul, so that it accompanies a man to his grave,he never outlives it; and that for this cause only, because he cannot outlive himself.

It is not necessary for a man to be assured of the righteousness of his conscience by such an infallible certainty of persuasion as amounts to the clearness of a demonstration; but it is sufficient if he knows it upon grounds of such a probability as shall exclude all rational grounds of doubting.

There is no action in the behaviour of one man towards another of which human nature is more impatient than of contempt; it being an undervaluing of a man upon a belief of his utter uselessness and inability, and a spiteful endeavour to engage the rest of the world in the same slight esteem of him.

Nothing can be a reasonable ground of despising a man but some fault chargeable upon him; and nothing can be a fault that is not naturally in a mans power to prevent: otherwise it is a mans unhappiness, his mischance or calamity, but not his fault.

To run the world back to its first original, and view nature in its cradle, to trace the outgoings of the Ancient of days in the first instance of his creative power, is a research too great for mortal inquiry.

It cannot but be matter of very dreadful consideration to any one, sober and in his wits, to think seriously with himself, what horror and confusion must needs surprise that man, at the last day of account, who had led his whole life by one rule, when God intends to judge him by another.

O the inexpressible horror that will seize upon a sinner when he stands arraigned at the bar of divine justice! when he shall see his accuser, his judge, the witnesses, all his remorseless adversaries!

Could I give you a lively representation of guilt and horror on this hand, and point out eternal wrath and decipher eternal vengeance on the other, then might I show you the condition of a sinner hearing himself denied by Christ.

Loss of sight is the misery of life, and usually the forerunner of death: when the malefactor comes once to be muffled, and the fatal cloth drawn over his eyes, we know that he is not far from his execution.

Whosoever deceives a man makes him ruin himself; and by causing an error in the great guide of his actions, his judgment, he causes an error in his choice, the misguidance of which must naturally engage him to his destruction.

Many secret indispositions and aversions to duty will steal upon the soul, and it will require both time and close application of mind to recover it to such a frame as shall dispose it for the spiritualities of religion.

Questionless, duty moves not so much upon command as promise: now, that which proposes the greatest and most suitable rewards to obedience, and the greatest punishments to disobedience, doubtless is the most likely to enforce the one and prevent the other.

Certainly the highest and dearest concerns of a temporal life are infinitely less valuable than those of an eternal; and consequently ought, without any demur at all, to be sacrificed to them, whensoever they come in competition with them.

The greater part of the world take up their persuasions concerning good and evil by an implicit faith and a full acquiescence in the word of those who shall represent things to them under these characters.

Since the Scripture promises eternal happiness and pardon of sin upon the sole condition of faith and sincere obedience, it is evident that he only can plead a title to such a pardon whose conscience impartially tells him that he has performed the required condition.

The Stoics held a fatality, and a fixed unalterable course of events; but then they held also that they fell out by a necessity emergent from and inherent in the things themselves, which God himself could not alter.

Foolishness, being properly a mans deviation from right reason, in point of practice must needs consist in his pitching upon such an end as is unsuitable to his condition, or pitching upon means unsuitable to the compassing of his end.

Albeit the will is not capable of being compelled to any of its actings, yet it is capable of being made to act with more or less difficulty, according to the different impressions it receives from motives or objects.

People young and raw and soft-natured think it an easy thing to gain love, and reckon their own friendship a sure price of any mans; but when experience shall have shown them the hardness of most hearts, the hollowness of others, and the baseness and ingratitude of almost all, they will then find that a friend is the gift of God, and that he only who made hearts can unite them.

It is a noble and great thing to cover the blemishes and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weaknesses in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the house-top.

If matter of fact breaks out with too great an evidence to be denied, why, still there are other lenitives, that friendship will apply before it will be brought to the decretory rigours of a condemning sentence.

The voice of God himself speaks in the heart of men, whether they understand it or no; and by secret intimations gives the sinner a foretaste of that direful cup which he is like to drink more deeply of hereafter.

It is the nature of every artificer to tender and esteem his own work; and if God should not love His creature it would reflect some disparagement upon His workmanship, that He should make anything that He could not own. Gods power never produces what His goodness cannot embrace. God oftentimes, in the same man, distinguishes between the sinner and the creature; as a creature He can love him, while as a sinner He does afflict him.

There is that controlling worth in goodness that the will cannot but like and desire it; and, on the other side, that odious deformity in vice, that it never offers itself to the affections of mankind but under the disguise of the other.

To men in governing most things fall out accidentally, and come not into any compliance with their preconceived ends; but they are forced to comply subsequently, and to strike in with things as they fall out, by postliminous after-applications of them to their purposes.

Governments that once made such a noise, as founded upon the deepest counsels and the strongest force, yet by some slight miscarriage, which let in ruin upon them, are now so utterly extinct that nothing remains of them but a name; nor are there the least traces of them to be found but only in story.

Gratitude is properly a virtue disposing the mind to an inward sense and an outward acknowledgement of a benefit received, together with a readiness to return the same, or the like, as the occasions of the doer shall require, and the abilities of the receiver extend to.

There never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate: it is this noble quality that makes all men to be of one kind; for every man would be a distinct species to himself were there no sympathy among individuals.

For a man to doubt whether there be any hell, and thereupon to live as if absolutely there were none, but when he dies to find himself confuted in the flames, this must be the height of woe and disappointment, and a bitter conviction of an irrational venture and absurd choice.

As God sometimes addresses himself in this manner to the hearts of men, so if the heart will receive such motions by a ready compliance they will return more frequently, and still more and more powerfully.

The favourable and good word of men comes oftentimes at a very easy rate; and by a few demure looks and affected whims, set off with some odd devotional postures and grimaces, and such other little acts of dissimulation, cunning men will do wonders.

Nor is excess the only thing by which sin breaks men in their health, and the comfortable enjoyment of themselves; but many are also brought to a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere idleness; and idleness is both itself a great sin, and the cause of many more.

Idolatry is not only an accounting or worshipping that for God which is not God, but it is also a worshipping the true God in a way unsuitable to his nature, and particularly by the mediation of images and corporal resemblances.

A mere inclination to a thing is not properly a willing of that thing; and yet in matters of duty men frequently reckon it for such: for otherwise how should they so often plead and rest in the honest and well-inclined dispositions of their minds, when they are justly charged with an actual non-performance of the law?

I may truly say of the mind of an ungrateful person, that it is kindness-proof. It is impenetrable, unconquerable; unconquerable by that which conquers all things else, even by love itself. Flints may be melted,we see it daily,but an ungrateful heart cannot; no, not by the strongest and the noblest flame.

By an exact parity of reason, we may argue, if a man has no sense of those kindnesses that pass upon him from one like himself, whom he sees and knows, how much less shall his heart be affected with the grateful sense of His favours whom he converses with only by imperfect speculations, by the discourses of reason, or the discoveries of faith?

The knowledge of what is good and what is evil, what ought and what ought not to be done, is a thing too large to be compassed, and too hard to be mastered, without brains and study, parts and contemplation.

The great inequality of all things to the appetites of a rational soul appears from this, that in all worldly things a man finds not half the pleasure in the actual possession that he proposed in the expectation.

Love is the great instrument of nature, the bond and cement of society, the spirit and spring of the universe. Love is such an affection as cannot so properly be said to be in the soul, as the soul to be in that: it is the whole nature wrapt up into one desire.

A lie is properly an outward signification of something contrary to, or at least beside, the inward sense of the mind: so that when one thing is signified or expressed, and the same thing not meant or intended, that is properly a lie.

A lie is properly a species of injustice, and a violation of the right of that person to whom the false speech is directed; for all speaking, or signification of ones mind, implies an act or address of one man to another.

Schoolmen and casuists, having too much philosophy to clear a lie from that intrinsic inordination and deviation from right reason inherent in the nature of it, held that a lie was absolutely and universally sinful.

How often may we meet with those who are one while courteous, but within a small time after are so supercilious, sharp, troublesome, fierce, and exceptions that they become the very sores and burdens of society!

When a man shall be just about to quit the stage of this world, to put off his mortality, and to deliver up his last accounts to God, his memory shall serve him for little else but to terrify him with a frightful review of his past life.

Aristotle affirms the mind to be at first a mere rasa tabula; and that notions are not ingenite, and imprinted by the finger of nature, but by the latter and more languid impressions of sense, being only the reports of observation, and the result of so many repeated experiments.

The morality of an action is founded in the freedom of that principle by virtue of which it is in the agents power, having all things ready and requisite to the performance of an action, either to perform or not perform it.

During the commotion of the blood and spirits, in which passion consists, whatsoever is offered to the imagination in favour of it tends only to deceive the reason: it is indeed a real trepan upon it, feeding it with colours and appearances instead of arguments.

Take any passion of the soul of man while it is predominant and afloat; and, just in the critical height of it, nick it with some lucky or unlucky word; and you may as certainly overrule it to your own purpose, as a spark of fire falling upon gunpowder will infallibly blow it up.

Great and strange calms usually portend the most violent storms; and therefore, since storms and calms do always follow one another, certainly, of the two, it is much more eligible to have the storm first, and the calm afterwards: since a calm before a storm is commonly a peace of a mans making; but a calm after a storm a peace of Gods.

Adam, in the state of innocence, came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appealed by his writing the natures of things upon their names: he could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties.

As in many things the knowledge of philosophers was short of the truth, so almost in all things their practice fell short of their knowledge: the principles by which they walked were as much below those by which they judged as their feet were below their head.

That pleasure is mans chiefest good, because indeed it is the perception of good that is properly pleasure, is an assertion most certainly true; though under the common acceptance of it, not only false, but odious: for, according to this, pleasure and sensuality pass for terms equivalent; and therefore he who takes it in this sense alters the subject of the discourse.

The sinner, at his highest pitch of enjoyment, is not pleased with it so much, but he is afflicted more; and as long as these inward rejolts and recoilings of the mind continue, the sinner will find his accounts of pleasure very poor.

The pleasure of the religious man is an easy and portable pleasure, such an one as he carries about in his bosom, without alarming either the eye or envy of the world: a man putting all his pleasures into this one is like a travellers putting all his goods into one jewel.

Was he not a man of wisdom? Yes, but he was poor: But was he not also successful? True, but still he was poor: Grant this, and you cannot keep off that unavoidable sequel in the next verse, the poor mans wisdom is despised.

It is not barely a mans abridgment in his external accommodations which makes him miserable; but when his conscience shall tell him that it was his sin and his folly which brought him under that abridgment.

None but the careless and the confident would rush rudely into the presence of a great man: and shall we, in our applications to the great God, take that to be religion which the common reason of mankind will not allow to be manners?

But you will ask, Upon what account is it that prayer becomes efficacious with God to procure us the good things we pray for? I answer, Upon this, that it is the fulfilling of that condition upon which God has promised to convey his blessings to men.

Creation must needs infer providence, and Gods making the world irrefragably proves that he governs it too; or that a being of dependent nature remains nevertheless independent upon him in that respect.

Let no man who owns a providence grow desperate under any calamity or strait whatsoever, but compose the anguish of his thoughts upon this one consideration, that he comprehends not those strange unaccountable methods by which providence may dispose of him.

Nor is that man less deceived that thinks to maintain a constant tenure of pleasure by a continual pursuit of sports and recreations: for all these things, as they refresh a man when weary, so they weary him when refreshed.

In persons already possessed with notions of religion, the understanding cannot be brought to change them, but by great examination of the truth and firmness of the one, and the flaws and weakness of the other.

If anything can legalize revenge, it should be injury from an extremely obliged person: but revenge is so absolutely the peculiar of heaven, that no consideration whatever can empower even the best men to assume the execution of it.

Neither a bare approbation of, nor a mere wishing, nor unactive complacency in, nor, lastly, a natural inclination to, things virtuous and good, can pass before God for a mans willing of such things: and, consequently, if men, upon this account, will needs take up and acquiesce in an airy ungrounded persuasion that they will those things which really they not will, they fall thereby into a gross and fatal delusion.

It is a quality that confines a man wholly within himself, leaving him void of that principle which alone should dispose him to communicate and impart those redundancies of good that he is possessed of.

Sin, taken into the soul, is like a liquor poured in a vessel; so much of it as it fills, it also seasons: the touch and tincture go together: so that although the body of the liquor should be poured out again, yet still it leaves that tang behind it.

Though sin offers itself in never so pleasing and alluring a dress at first, yet the remorse and inward regrets of the soul upon the commission of it infinitely overbalance those faint and transient gratifications it affords the senses.

The wages that sin bargains with the sinner are life, pleasure, and profit; but the wages it pays him with are death, torment, and destruction: he that would understand the falsehood and deceit of sin thoroughly must compare its promises and its payments together.

Compare the harmlessness, the credulity, the tenderness, the modesty, and the ingenious pliableness to virtuous counsels, which is in youth untainted, with the mischievousness, the slyness, the craft, the impudence, the falsehood, and the confirmed obstinacy in an aged long-practised sinner.

The last fatal step is, by frequent repetition of the sinful act, to continue and persist in it, till at length it settles into a fixed confirmed habit of sin; which, being that which the apostle calls the finishing of sin, ends certainly in death; death not only as to merit, but also as to actual infliction.

As by flattery a man is usually brought to open his bosom to his mortal enemy, so by detraction, and a slanderous misreport of persons, he is often brought to shut the same even to his best and truest friends.

There is no such thing as perfect secrecy, to encourage a rational mind to the perpetration of any base action; for a man must first extinguish and put out the great light within him, his conscience: he must get away from himself, and shake off the thousand witnesses which he always carries about him, before he can be alone.

There are two functions of the soul, contemplation and practice, according to that general division of objects, some of which only entertain our speculations, others also employ our actions; so the understanding with relation to these is divided into speculative and practic.

Heights that scorn our prospect, and depths of which reason will never touch the bottom, yet surely the pleasure arising from thence is great and noble; forasmuch as they afford perpetual matter to the inquisitiveness of human reason, and so are large enough for it to take its full scope and range in.

When the corruption of mens manners, by the habitual improvement of this vicious principle, comes, from personal, to be general and universal, so as to diffuse and spread itself over the whole community, it naturally and directly tends to the ruin and subversion of the government where it so prevails.

The only persons amongst the heathens who sophisticated nature and philosophy were the Stoics; who affirmed a fatal, unchangeable concatenation of causes, reaching even to the elicite acts of mans will.

The Stoics held a fatality, and a fixed, unalterable course of events; but then they held also that they fell out by a necessity emergent from and inherent in the things themselves, which God himself could not alter.

If a man succeeds in any attempt, though undertook with never so much rashness, his success shall vouch him a politician, and good luck shall pass for deep contrivance: for give any one fortune, and he shall be thought a wise man.

Nothing can so peculiarly gratify the noble dispositions of human nature as for one man to see another so much himself as to sigh his griefs, and groan his pains, to sing his joys, and do and feel everything by sympathy and secret inexpressible communications.

Men more easily pardon ill things done than said; such a peculiar rancour and venom do they leave behind in mens minds, and so much more poisonously and incurably does the serpent bite with his tongue than his teeth.

When the supreme faculties move regularly, the inferior passions and affections following, there arises a serenity and complacency upon the whole soul, infinitely beyond the greatest bodily pleasures, the highest quintessence and elixir of worldly delights.

Truth is a stronghold, fortified by God and nature, and diligence is properly the understandings laying siege to it; so that it must be perpetually observing all the avenues and passes to it, and accordingly making its approaches.

An homage which nature commands all understandings to pay to virtue; and yet it is but a faint, unactive thing; for, in defiance of the judgment, the will may still remain as much a stranger to virtue as before.

There is as much difference between the approbation of the judgment, and the actual volitions of the will, as between a mans viewing a desirable thing with his eye, and reaching after it with his hand.

When the will has exerted an act of command upon any faculty of the soul, or member of the body, it has done all that the whole man, as a moral agent, can do for the actual exercise or employment of such a faculty or member.

There cannot be a more important case of conscience for men to be resolved in than to know certainly how far God accepts the will for the deed, and how far he does not; and to be informed truly when men do really will a thing, and when they have really no power to do what they have willed.

God never accepts a good inclination instead of a good action, where that action may be done; nay, so much the contrary, that if a good inclination be not seconded by a good action, the want of that action is made so much the more criminal and inexcusable.

The doctrine that asserts that it is in mens power to supererogate, and do works of perfection over and above what is required of them by way of precept, tends to the undermining and hindrance of a godly life.

Compare the harmlessness, the tenderness, the modesty, and the ingenuous pliableness, which is in youth, with the mischievousness, the slyness, the craft, the impudence, the falsehood, and the confirmed obstinacy found in an aged, long-practised sinner.

It is idleness that creates impossibilities; and where men care not to do a thing, they shelter themselves under a persuasion that it cannot be done. The shortest and the surest way to prove a work possible, is strenuously to set about it; and no wonder if that proves it possible that for the most part makes it so.

It is wonderful to consider how a command or call to be liberal, either upon a civil or religious account, all of a sudden impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts up every private mans exchequer, and makes those men in a minute have nothing who, at the very same instant, want nothing to spend. So that, instead of relieving the poor, such a command strangely increases their number, and transforms rich men into beggars presently.